Functional
by Musamea
Summary: The words that uneasy truces allow: a missing scene between old acquaintances in X2.
1. Bird with a Broken Wing

**Title:** Functional  
**Author: **Musamea  
**Disclaimer: **Stan Lee, Marvel, and Fox own the X-Men. George Lucas owns _Star Wars_. I own nothing.  
**Warnings:** Language and implied slash.  
**Summary:** The words that uneasy truces allow: a missing scene between old acquaintances in X2.

Many thanks to Naomi for the beta.

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1. Bird with a Broken Wing  
-Jean- 

She hadn't expected him to offer any help, and didn't want to accept it when he appeared at the top of the stairs and proffered his assistance.

"I can fix her myself," she said, clutching the wrench in front of her like a weapon.

He snorted. "You think too highly of your abilities, Jean. I, for one, do not fancy going down in flames of glory tomorrow, whatever I might wish upon the rest of you."

"I've learned a lot in the last twenty years." _Since you left_.

"And I haven't been around to observe your education, you mean?" He was far too good at picking up on a telepath's thoughts. But then again, he would be, wouldn't he?

He took advantage of her moment's hesitation and pulled the wrench out of her hands with a crook of his finger. She could have taken it back with her TK – _maybe_, she acknowledged; Erik had far more control over his mutation than she did hers – but decided against it. It would be undignified, and God knew she'd already lost enough of her pride in Logan's kiss.

_Besides_, she told herself, _the Blackbird's not a movie prop, and you're sure as hell no Leia Organa. Be sensible, Jean. _

So she nodded her head, once, and led him to the rear of the jet. He may have sealed the outer hull that afternoon, but a large chunk of the cabin floor had been blown out by the blast. She gestured at the exposed mess of charred metal and tangled wires. "I'll need you to close this up after I fix the electrical systems. In the meantime, you can just straighten things out a bit and take a look at the engine. I'm worried some debris may have gotten trapped in it. And then check the back wall again."

"There is nothing wrong with the back wall."

"You did a ten-second patch job," she said. "Check it."

"There is nothing wrong with it," he repeated. "My _patch job_, as you so distastefully call it, was quite sufficient to the task. "

"Oh right, I forgot. You can do no wrong, can you?"

"Such hostility," he murmured, in that half-amused, half-condescending tone he'd employed all evening. She remembered it from Liberty Island as well.

_Oh yes, a bolt of lightening into a huge copper conductor. I thought you lived at a school?_

Hostility? _You tried to _kill _me_.

They had never been quite easy around each other, even in the old days. Scott and Hank might hold guiltily fond memories of Erik's time at the mansion, when he had been mentor and teacher both, but Jean's mind had been far too raw and open then. She'd caught all the mental arguments and dark ponderings, making it impossible for her to ever think of Erik in wholly childish and simplistic terms. And while her lover and her friend now had to reconcile the benevolent authority figure of their past with the perceived enemy of their present, _she_ had to watch the Professor making plans against this so-called enemy, knowing exactly what Erik had once meant to Charles. Knowing what he still meant.

So here they were: he sat cross-legged and Zen-like on the floor; she was sprawled out on her belly opposite him with a diagram spread out in front of her. A brief smile had touched her lips when she saw Scott's square script annotating the map of wires. A line beside every colored cable relabeled it with a number. Then, at the bottom of the page, "An utterly useless system for colorblind engineers." All the kids in his shop class had quickly learned his method. It was either that or humiliate their teacher because he couldn't tell red from blue when he graded their tests.

_Scott_.

For the millionth time that day, her mind reached out for his, pushing at the furthest limits of her mutation. But it was useless. Even with her expanded powers he was either out of range or...

_If they killed him, I would have felt it, wouldn't I?_

Her fingers slipped and she dropped her screwdriver down into the mass of wires. "Shit."

Erik looked up. "A problem?"

She shook her head and her TK reached out for the tool. It smacked into her waiting palm with such surprising force that she almost cursed again. A faint rustle like the swish of taffeta skirts or feathers rubbing together resounded through her mind. She shook her head again. _I need some coffee_.

"Did he distract you that much?"

It was her turn to look up. "What?"

"Logan," Erik clarified. "When the cat's away, the mice will play, hmm? And in this case, it certainly looks like the mice have wasted no time in playing."

Enraged, she sat up. "What the _hell _do you know? How _dare_ you question my loyalty to Scott?"

He smiled. "Well, at least we're speaking baldly now. That's improvement."

_You smug, hypocritical bastard_, she thought. Aloud, she said, "There is nothing going on between us."

"But you wish there were?"

"I turned him down just now, didn't I?" She really wished he'd stop smiling.

"Out of guilt or duty, Jean? Admit it, you wanted him."

_What do you _want_ me to say_? She flung the words at his mind. He hadn't been expecting _that_, so for an instant he lay open and vulnerable to her TP. Then he put his defenses up and, of course, they were enough to block her out. After all, he had learned from the best. She switched to a verbal assault. "Do you want me to say I'm attracted to him? Fine. I _am_. That doesn't change anything. You don't just walk out on someone you love because of a whim!"

She saw his lips tighten at that last sentence and felt a momentary flash of victory. _So much for dignity_, she thought. Then: _The Professor loved him. Loves him. _The rage left her as suddenly as it came.

"It wasn't a whim," Erik said quietly. The condescension was gone from his voice.

She bowed her head. "I know." Her voice was equally low. She drew her long legs in, hugged them to her chest and rested her chin on one knee. "Scott loves my mind, you know? Don't bother making a joke with that; I know he finds me attractive too. But he sees beyond that. He sees _me_.

"Now Logan... well, for him the double doctorate, the research on mutant genetics, the gaining more control over my powers... that's all noise. _You_ know more about what makes me who I am than he does. He could care less how I take my coffee, what I think about the current administration, what sights I want to see before I die. To him, I'm just another body to warm the sheets. And if he can get a rise out of Scott - his rival alpha male - trying to get me there, then double the points to him."

Erik raised one eyebrow. She remembered the gesture from the times she'd fumbled over German verbs in his classroom. "He seems to be going to a lot of trouble for 'just another warm body.'"

"Maybe he thinks it's more. I don't know." She shrugged. "But the very fact that he came on to me at a time like _this_... I mean, my fiancé and mentor are missing; my jet's torn apart; I destroyed a missile with my _mind_this afternoon; I'm making truces with people who tried to kill us several months ago... it's not what a man does to the person he loves, you know?"

A corner of Erik's mouth tipped up into a smile. "Maybe he's read too many articles about how near death experiences are supposed to make humans rabid for life-affirming sex."

"Even if that is an exaggeration, it still proves my point. If you're banking on vulnerability to get into a woman's pants, you're not loving or comforting her. You're taking advantage of her. Period."

"Well, I very much doubt Logan's wolfish mind comprehends such nuances," Erik said dryly.

She wanted to object to this statement, wanted to tell him he was being unfair, but maybe it was better to let him underestimate Xavier's newest ally. Besides - _Methinks the lady doth protest too much_. You pick and choose your battles as much as you can, and this one simply wasn't worth fighting.

She looked down at her screwdriver. "Do you remember that Christmas you gave Scott his first tool set? He's always said you're the reason he got into tinkering with bikes and cars and jets."

"I can't imagine he's very happy about having to attribute such a thing to me," he said. "Scott has always been an idealist at heart. Charles taught him well."

"He's an idealist with a pragmatist's mind," she told him. "Mechanics wasn't the only thing he got from you."

"Then maybe he'll be more successful than either of his mentors."

She looked up at him then, expecting to find irony in his features, and was surprised to see only fatigue. Part of her still thought of him as twenty years younger, with all his old energy. Another part couldn't help but remember how godlike he had seemed lifting himself to the torch on Liberty Island, and again, today, when he had stopped several tons of plummeting metal with an outstretched hand. Weariness and age factored in nowhere.

_He's old_, she realized. And that meant, of course, that Charles was old as well.

_We always thought we'd have more time. Not a great deal more, but... but more than _this_. I'm not ready to lead them if something happens to Charles. And Bobby's nowhere near ready if something... oh God, Scott, you better be okay. _

It's hard to hold onto grudges when you're faced with the end of your world, especially when one of those grudges is against someone who was once _part_ of your world. So, with a small smile, she said to him, "You gave me a microscope that same year, remember? It was exactly what I wanted, and I was so thrilled."

"I remember," he replied. "I'd never seen someone so excited about studying pond scum. You told me that I'd gotten your wish exactly right, without even being able to read your mind."

"Hmm, yeah," she laughed softly. "And _you_ told _m_e that telepathy was a crutch."

"That sounds about right."

They looked at each other across the hole in the floor. She wanted to break the silence, to ask him _Was it worth nothing to you? How could you just leave us like that? Do you hate us now or love us still? Or do you also feel this mix of both, which is harder than either extreme?_

_Can I trust you? Why do I feel like you're hiding something behind that smile? Why do I think you're playing us? _

_Do you still love him? Will you always love him? Or can love die?_

But there are only so many things that an uneasy truce allowed, and inquisitions weren't one of them. So she sighed and floated the screwdriver back to its slot in Scott's toolbox. "I'm going to bed," she said, standing. "We can test this heap in the morning."

He nodded and she turned toward the stairs.

"Oh, and check the back wall again, will you?" she said over her shoulder.

She heard him laughing as she left the jet.

**

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Author's Note:** The _Star Wars _reference is a deliberate riff off of something Brian Singer mentioned in the _X2_ commentary about how the Logan and Jean kissing scene mirrored a similar interlude between Han Solo and Princess Leia in _The Empire Strikes Back_. 


	2. Impediments

2. Impediments  
-Erik-

He hadn't lied to her, he reasoned once she'd left. Not exactly, at any rate. He really _didn't_ want the jet to fall out of the sky tomorrow morning. Any reasons beyond that, they didn't have to know.

He wasn't about to let them all die before they could reach Charles.

His gaze drifted over the interior of the Blackbird with admiration. Every inch of the jet was state of the art and his fingers itched to take her apart piece by pieceand examine her more closely. Cases displaying the X Men's uniforms stood opposite of him, black leather bathed with cool blue light. For a moment, he wondered how it would feel to wear one of the suits.

_Hideously uncomfortable, in all likelihood_, he told himself. It wasn't the time for either well-tailored heroics or shop class; he had a jet to fix.

He lifted a hand and a wrench floated out of Scott's toolbox to hover several inches above the hole in the floor. It was really only there for show, as gestures from his other hand were piecing screws and metal panels back together.

Raven had been waiting for him in a commandeered Secret Service car when he'd emerged from the prison. He'd smiled, briefly; he'd always known his clever girl would get him out. Of course, when he slid into the passenger seat, he only said, "What took you so long?"

She'd flicked him off, and he'd grinned. It was always good to know that some things remained constant even as the world was tearing itself apart.

He hadn't kissed her then; he'd barely touched her all day. And tonight, once Charles's protégés were asleep, he knew he wouldn't go to her. Judging by the way she had been looking at Logan earlier (as if she wasn't quite sure whether to screw him or kill him), he didn't think she'd lack for company.

She wasn't a fool, and she wasn't naive. She knew that he didn't and wouldn't love her. But it wasn't just sex between them either. _You don't have 'just' of _anything_ with Raven_, Erik thought, amused. He admired and trusted her, and that probably meant more to her than his love ever would. He enjoyed her acerbic sense of humor and her anyone-you-can-be-I-can-be-better attitude. And he'd long ago learned how important it was to work with someone who shared your outlook on the worth (or lack thereof) of humanity.

Besides, he'd only ever loved three people in his entire life, and he'd been burned each time. Some lessons you learned quickly enough, when pain was involved. His years in Mengele's lab had taught him _that_.

Well, his mother and father only appeared to him in dreams now. Dreams that stank of moldy bread and too many bodies stuffed into one building, with the hideous scent given off by charred flesh. He couldn't remember their faces when he was awake. The only images his faulty memory could conjure were those of scowling guards and a twisted metal gate. He'd resigned himself to that.

But he was damned if he'd lose Charles as well.

A flick of his wrist and the wrench began spinning itself into a silver blur. Its two ends stretched, doubled back on themselves, and twisted about each other.

Even if he had told Jean his true motives for 'helping' the X Team, she wouldn't have understood them. Her world had been painted in black and white for as long as he'd known her. She'd told him once, years ago, that she liked science because "If your theory's right, you get the same experimental results over and over again. If the data doesn't match up, you know you're wrong. Easy."

_Not so easy, Dr. Grey._ Not when there were scientists who would twist data to refute your very humanity. He'd seen her visible unease at the Senate hearings when Kelly had started spouting his doublespeak. It couldn't possibly have been the first time she'd ever encountered political spin, but he'd known then that it likely disheartened and surprised her every time. Jean had always wanted to believe the best in mankind. People went into medicine for a variety of mercenary and altruistic reasons, but she had done so because she was inherently an optimist.

_You want to fix everything. This jet, the scientific community, the government. Charles and me. Not so easy, Dr. Grey._

Not when you didn't understand that love and hate are the opposite sides of the same coin, and that if you spin a coin fast enough, two sides become one. He'd known that truth long before Charles learned it.

He could still remember one afternoon back at the school when young Henry McCoy had sought him out.

"Mr. Lensherr? I couldn't help hearing your argument with the Professor just now."

It had happened during his last days at the mansion, when he'd taken to sleeping in a spare room, when he and Charles could barely meet without fighting. And they had fought verbally, openly, loudly. A shock to the non-telepaths at the school.

He'd looked up at Hank that day and watched his own reflection in the boy's glasses as he'd answered, "Charles and I are both 'all or nothing' people, Henry. And, unfortunately, sometimes our definitions of those words don't match."

"So whose definition should I adopt, sir?"

He'd thought before replying, "Your own, of course." At that moment, he'd still been angry enough to have no inclination of saying "His." He wouldn't concede that point or direct a young man along a path he himself did not wish to follow. But he hadn't been the least bit tempted to say "Mine" either. He'd lacked the requisite patience and inclination for teaching, and at that time, he'd wanted freedom from Charles's dream above everything else. He'd had no desire to take a student with him when he left Xavier's School for the Gifted.

He had no such qualms now, he mused. He figured that Charles owed him a pupil or two after the deaths of Toad and Sabertooth. He'd prefer Robert Drake, who lived up to the name Iceman in more ways than one. He was so very much like how Scott had been as a teenager (without the cocksureness, but Erik was pretty certain that would come in time). He would make a good pupil for Raven, if his mind and mechanical learning curve proved to be anything like Scott's. But Erik was ready to make do with what he had at hand, and the young man he'd seen playing with a lighter had enough attitude for the entire Academy of Gifted Youngsters. The boy would do admirably. Besides, there _was_ something to be said for the merits of passion and anger.

He wondered if a student's defection would be the straw that finally broke Xavier's back (not that Charles needed any help in _that_ department). He would give the boy a choice, of course. No one would be able to point a finger at him and accuse him of 'stealing' Charles's pupil.

His train of thought stopped short at the idea. The wrench – now resembling a rectangular silver ingot more than a tool – spun out of his control and flew into a wall, falling to the floor with a clang. Charles had forgiven him for Raven's tampering with Cerebro, for killing (in essence) Senator Kelly, for nearly killing Rogue. But perhaps Xavier had grown to despise himself for weakness more and more each time he failed to cut Erik off entirely. It was certainly how _Erik_ would have felt, had their positions been reversed. So it was inevitable that someday (even if it wasn't this day), some event (even if it wasn't the supposed theft of a fire-wielding rebel) would sever the last ties between them and make the rift permanent.

Maybe. He allowed himself a _maybe_. Not because of any innate optimism. He was far too old and had seen far too much for optimism. But rather because he knew, more than anyone else alive, that one couldn't pull two faces of a coin apart from each other, not without utterly destroying it. And, despite everything, he still believed that Charles was too strong for him to destroy.

And he was glad of it.

He stood slowly, waving his palm over the hole in the floor to seal it. Another flick of his fingers (almost an afterthought) restored the two ends of the wrench to their proper configuration, though a close examination of the tool would have revealed tiny bumps and small irregularities that had not existed before.

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**Author's Note:** Many thanks to Naomi for her usual patience and professionalism in beta-ing, and to Robin, who read this when she already had way too much on her plate. 


End file.
